In today’s always online world of ‘stans’ and fan bases that can be easily mobilized for various causes, it really says something when the people who love your work turn on you. Separating the art from the artist is sometimes a big challenge for people, but here we have fans who care about the art. so many that they refuse to let contempt for the artist take anything away from their pleasure.

Harry potter fans are the ones who are currently unraveling this kind of canvas, with Major fan sites are already distancing themselves from original creator JK Rowling on his comments about transgender people, and right now real Quidditch players– who are already so devoted to Harry potter that they’ll be playing Quidditch in real life – trying to find a way to keep playing their sport / LARP / whatever you call it without giving Rowling credit.

It depends The Guardian, and, really, it’s long overdue. Quidditch is a game that witches and wizards play on flying brooms, and actual Quidditch is not. It’s an approximation of that, as close as it gets in real life, with custom modifications made to the rules so that they A.) make more sense than the version made by the original author and B.) are more appropriate for a world without real magic.

the Guardian history explains that two American Quidditch leagues – US Quidditch and Major League Quidditch – are working together to come up with a new name, noting in a statement that it is being “done” to distance itself from the work of JK Rowling, who is increasingly subject under scrutiny of her anti-trans positions in recent years.

Quidditch is also known to be inclusive, which makes this decision to move Rowling’s game away even less surprising, American Quidditch in particular having a “maximum gender rule” that says a team cannot have “more than four players who identify as being of the same sex “. (This is part of “Title 9 3/4”, which is kinda cute, but whatever. We’re talking Quidditch here.)

the Guardian the story doesn’t mention any possible replacement for the name “Quidditch”, but it can’t be something reasonable like Hoop Toss or Catch Ball or… Catch Toss Ball Hoop, can it? Even something like Wizard Ball doesn’t seem appropriate, as it would only apply to magical people identifying men, and Magic Ball would just disappoint people when they realized there was no magic involved.

This brings up another interesting point: once the name is changed, we could live in a world where someone could hypothetically experience the sport of Magic Hoop Catch organically and have no idea that it is based on any thing. ‘a book – completely cutting JK Rowling out of the equation. This is the dream !